Air conditioning appliances with several interchangeable heat exchangers are known in various configurations in the prior art.
Heating and air conditioning units for vehicles with internal combustion engines generally have a glycol heating heat exchanger and optionally an auxiliary electrical heater, such as a positive temperature coefficient (PTC) heating element. These two heating elements have a predetermined size and arrangement. The auxiliary electrical heater (PTC) is situated in the air flow direction behind the glycol heating heat exchanger.
A heating and air conditioning system for a vehicle is known from U.S. Pat. Appl. Pub. No. 2004/0256082, with compressor, condenser, fan and expansion valve modules arranged on a frame.
In DE 10 2004 051 874 B3, a modular system is described for building an air treatment system (air conditioner) for vehicles. An expansion module designed as a shove-in drawer is provided in the housing, and the expansion module can be outfitted with different functional elements and thus, the outfitting with functional elements can be quickly changed with the interchangeable expansion modules. But here, the complete expansion modules have to be interchanged in order to realize a new configuration of the functional elements. For a quick interchange, the different functional elements cannot be used in both shove-in drawers.
DE 10 2007 027 798 A1 proposes coupling the air conditioning unit of a motor vehicle to at least one temperature control module by a coupling module. No further information is provided as to the structural form of the coupling module or its arrangement.
Air conditioners with a fixed size and arrangement of the heating elements cannot be used for different vehicle types such as internal combustion engine, hybrid drive, or electric drive. For vehicles with hybrid or fully electric drive, new heating or auxiliary heating techniques and thus, novel heating elements are needed. These novel heating elements are generally not compatible in size and arrangement with the classical heating elements for vehicles with internal combustion engines. Therefore, different air conditioning housing types are needed.
U.S. Pat. Appl. Pub. No. 200410256082 A1 deals solely with vehicles with an electric air conditioning system for hybrid or fuel cell automobiles. The described module also contains, besides the heater/air conditioner, the entire refrigerant circuit. The structural form of the heater/air conditioner itself is not described.
DE 10 2004 051 874 B3 describes a plug-in expansion module that can be outfitted with different functional elements. The expansion module corresponds to a single large cassette that can be shoved into the housing opening that is provided. Each variant of the heater/air conditioner with a different sequence of heat exchangers or different configurations of heat exchangers would thus require a specially adapted variant of this large and thus costly cassette.
DE 10 2005 029 774 A1 describes a motor vehicle air conditioning unit with a multipiece air conduit housing and components arranged therein such as at least a heater, wherein the air conduit housing is fashioned as a plug-in part in the area of at least one of the components.
A very generally described temperature control module is known from DE 10 2007 027 798 A1, which when not in use by the driver of the vehicle is easily taken out, so as to save on weight and thus energy. Nothing is said about the structural form.
The problem of the invention is to create a heat exchanger unit that enables a simple and economical interchanging of function, form, and size of the different heat exchanger modules. The interchanging should be possible in regard to the sequence of the individual heat exchanger modules. Likewise, it should also be possible to easily replace heat exchanger modules by other ones. The heat exchanger unit should be space saving and economical. The heat exchanger modules should be compatible between different heat exchanger units according to the invention.